About MYTV

MYTV

MYTV was an Indonesian television network that operated under that name from 1 February 2019 until it closed permanently on 8 March 2023. It was positioned, after its acquisition by the Mayapada Group, as the first women's-interest television channel in Indonesia, broadcasting lifestyle, talk, reality and entertainment programming aimed at women in the Indonesian language. The MYTV name was, however, only the final chapter of a longer history. The network had begun broadcasting on 28 August 2006 as Banten TV, a local station for Jakarta and Banten, and had relaunched on 1 January 2016 as INTV, expanding into a national network, before the Mayapada acquisition brought the MYTV identity. Its operating company was PT Banten Media Global Televisi — rendered in some listings as PT Banten Mayapada Global Televisi — and it was headquartered in Jakarta. Its seventeen years on air, across three names and two owners, trace the path of a local station trying to find a sustainable national identity in Indonesia's crowded free-to-air market.

Beginnings as Banten TV, 2006 to 2015

The station was founded by Wawan and Evan Setiawan and launched on 28 August 2006 under the name Banten TV, owned in that period by Netwave Multimedia, also recorded as the Netwave Group. It was a local television station serving Jakarta and the neighbouring province of Banten, broadcasting from channel 22 UHF in the capital, from a transmitter site whose tower stood about 100 metres tall. Its programming in the Banten TV years was that of a general local station: news, entertainment and talk shows aimed at the population of Banten, Jakarta and the surrounding area. One point of care is needed in describing this period: a separate Banten television service associated with the Radar Banten newspaper group also used similar Banten TV and Baraya TV naming in the province, returning to air in 2019 under Jawa Pos Group ownership; the network described here is the Netwave station that became INTV and then MYTV, not the newspaper group's station. Under Netwave, Banten TV remained essentially a local broadcaster for its first decade, building the licence, transmitter relationships and programme schedule on which its later national expansion would rest.

Relaunch as INTV and national expansion, 2016 to 2019

On 1 January 2016 the station relaunched as INTV, a name presented as Inspirasi Televisi, Inspiration Television, with the tagline of being innovative, initiative-taking and inspiring. As INTV it developed from a local station into a television network broadcasting across Indonesia, available in cities including Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi in the capital region, and Palembang, Medan, Lampung, Palu, Kendari, Manado, Pangkal Pinang and Ternate beyond it. The station broadcast for about nineteen hours a day. Its programme composition in the INTV period is documented in studies of the station: roughly a third of output consisted of infomercials, talk shows and public service programming; about a tenth was film, telenovela and Western series; about a tenth was family and education programming; just under a quarter was music; and just under a quarter was news, infotainment and documentary. The station described its focus as information, education and entertainment, with an emphasis on local nuance and on involving viewers through interactive programmes and off-air activities, and its audience profile was concentrated in the middle-to-lower income groups. Distribution in this period combined terrestrial broadcasting with satellite carriage on Palapa D, pay television services including IndiHome, My Republic and others, and mobile applications and streaming.

Acquisition by the Mayapada Group

The decisive change came in 2018, when the Mayapada Group, the business empire associated with Dato Sri Tahir, acquired the network. Indonesian reference accounts record that Mayapada acquired 90 percent of the station's ownership in 2018, ending the Netwave era that had run since 2006. Mayapada was at that time building a media portfolio: it had interests in magazines published under international licences, including Forbes Indonesia and Elle Indonesia, and it had earlier held a stake in another television station, RTV, which was later sold to Rajawali Corpora. Reports on Mayapada's media expansion note that Tahir confirmed his company held a share in the INTV station before the full repositioning. The acquisition was announced to viewers through the station's own channels: on 22 January 2019 INTV announced on its social media pages that it would change to MYTV following the network's acquisition by the Mayapada Group, and that it would be repositioned as a women's-interest channel. The rebranding took effect on 1 February 2019, with the new logo in use from 18 January 2019 ahead of the change.

MYTV: Indonesia's first women's channel

As MYTV, the network was repositioned as the first women's-interest television channel in Indonesia. Its slogan in this period is recorded as Life, Love, Laugh, and Indonesian listings also carried the description of the channel as an inspiration channel. The editorial idea was to serve the varied needs of women viewers: programmes addressing a happy family life, a successful career, higher education, and continuing to create and achieve amid the many demands placed on women. The schedule combined talk shows, reality drama and reality shows, variety programmes and infotainment drama aimed at that audience. Contemporary reporting on the relaunch, including coverage in March 2019 of the channel's talk show production being accelerated to serve the women's segment, treated the repositioning as a deliberate niche strategy: rather than competing head-on with the large general entertainment networks, MYTV would own a defined demographic. The Mayapada context reinforced the concept, since the group also published women's and lifestyle magazine brands under licence, giving the channel a conceptual fit within a portfolio that already sold advertising against women's audiences in print.

Programming in the MYTV years

Programming under the MYTV name centred on women, lifestyle and entertainment in Indonesian. Talk shows and reality formats were its signature genres: reality drama, talk shows and reality shows are the categories consistently used to describe its schedule, alongside variety shows and infotainment drama. The inherited programme mix from the INTV years — talk and public service content, family and education programming, music, news and infotainment — was progressively re-aimed at the female audience the new brand promised advertisers. This was a schedule built for daytime and lifestyle viewing rather than for prime-time drama competition: conversation, real-life stories and aspirational material about family, work and personal development. The station's small scale relative to Indonesia's major networks meant that much of its output was modestly produced, but the clarity of its positioning was unusual in the Indonesian market, where channels were typically defined by genre — news, entertainment, sport, children — rather than by the gender of the intended audience.

Network and distribution

MYTV operated as a national network through owned and affiliated stations, as Indonesian broadcasting law requires networked stations to build local affiliates. Regulatory licensing data quoted in reference listings shows the flagship station in Jakarta serving the capital region including Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, Bekasi and Serang on analog channel 22 UHF and digital channel 32 UHF under DVB-T2, with network stations including MYTV Lampung in the Kalianda and Bandar Lampung area on 39 UHF, MYTV Kendari on 22 UHF, MYTV Medan on 55 UHF, MYTV Pangkal Pinang on 38 UHF, MYTV Ternate on 32 UHF, MYTV Palembang on 56 UHF, and stations serving Manado and Palu and Donggala. Several of these outlying stations were already off air during the network's later period. Beyond terrestrial broadcasting, MYTV could be watched via satellite on Palapa D and IP-Star 1, through pay television services including IndiHome, Transvision and K-Vision, and through mobile applications and streaming services such as Mivo and DENSTV. That multi-platform footprint was typical of Indonesia's second-tier networks, for which satellite and pay carriage compensated for an incomplete terrestrial network.

Closure in March 2023

MYTV was monitored as no longer broadcasting during 2023, and its closure is dated precisely: on 8 March 2023 it was closed permanently. The station's official website became inactive, and the network took its place among Indonesia's defunct broadcasters, listed among the former assets of the Mayapada Group alongside its earlier pay television channel family. The timing placed its end in the period immediately after Indonesia's analog switch-off, completed in late 2022, which forced every broadcaster to operate fully within the digital terrestrial system and raised the cost and complexity of maintaining a small national network. No successor service took over the MYTV identity, and its frequencies and network stations did not continue under the brand. With its closure, Indonesia lost its first explicitly women's-interest free-to-air channel, less than five years after the concept had been launched.

Assessment and legacy

MYTV's significance lies less in audience size than in the clarity of the experiment it represented in its final incarnation. Indonesian television had channels for news, for children, for religion and for sport, but the Mayapada repositioning of 2019 was the first attempt to build a free-to-air national network explicitly around women viewers, aligning the channel with the group's licensed women's magazine brands. The longer history behind the brand also illustrates a common Indonesian broadcasting pattern: a local station founded in the decentralised licensing era — Banten TV in 2006, founded by Wawan and Evan Setiawan under Netwave — expanding through networking into INTV, and finally being absorbed into a conglomerate's portfolio and rebranded around a market segment. Each identity lasted only a few years, which itself tells the story of how difficult it was for small networks to hold a position against Indonesia's large established groups. MYTV is therefore recorded as two things at once: a seventeen-year-old broadcast licence that passed through three names, and, in its last four years, a genuine first in Indonesian television — a national channel made for women.